The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions.

Unity does not mean uniformity. It means diversity coming together.
-Bryan Sederwall, Denver Church

Alright. I feel like I’m playing with fire this post...but really, I shouldn’t. Since when did the truth become dangerous fire? If the truth damages, it isn’t the revelation of that truth that caused the damage, but the content of the truth itself. Therefore the fix comes by changing the content of that truth so that it is no longer true (creating a new truth), not from hiding that truth from view and stuffing it to the bottom of the barrel. I will take the truth at any cost, and I think others should, too. Again, if something is true, hiding it is the worst possible course of action, because then you are adding deception on top of a pernicious truth.

Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth.
-Albert Einstein

The first reaction to truth is hatred.
-Tertullian

Be still because what I'm about to say is the truth.
-Relient K

I am going to discuss my feelings and observations (3 of them) about Sovereign Grace Ministries that I have acquired in the past year. I hope my words are spoken with unwavering boldness and conviction but not with the very self-righteousness I am calling attention to. But very importantly, I want to start off by clearly defining what I am not.

I am not making statements that apply to every Sovereign Grace church and every Sovereign Grace member. My statements are generally characteristic of SGM at large, but that does not mean that everyone fits into this mold. Nevertheless, my deductions about SGM are from looking at the ministry at large, and therefore the problems I see are tied into the leadership, doctrines and practices.

I am not anti-Sovereign Grace. Not in any sense. It should not be reduced to an ultimatum where either I think Sovereign Grace is perfectly perfect or it is perfectly imperfect. There are flaws that I and many others have seen in Sovereign Grace Ministries that those in SGM are blinded to seeing themselves (like a fish in water, trying to define something that’s not wet). However, I am not bitter against SGM and am not out to prove that they’re the worst group of churches out there, a position taken by many a blogger on sites such as sgmsurvivors.com and sgmrefuge.com. No. Sovereign Grace is a group of churches filled with sincere people who do love the Lord and strive to keep the gospel central. There are many things I respect about them. However, there are flaws and shortcomings in their practices, some of which are breeding grounds for immense self-righteousness. I really hope you can defeat this stubbornness of opinion in your own heart if it exists: just because I have convictions against some of what Sovereign Grace does, does not mean I am against the entire ministry. However, I cannot with a good conscious bend myself over backwards to ignore my convictions. I don’t believe that is even Biblical.

Two more important things I would like to get out: 1) If you attend a Sovereign Grace church, please know that this does not change my opinion and outlook on you or your spiritual maturity. Chances are, I respect you greatly and have a lot to glean from you in a conversation. I am only pointing out what I have been led to believe as wrong in your group of churches, just as I know that the church I attend and I myself have areas that I am blind to and need others to point out. 2) If you disagree with me, that's fine. But please, disagree with me on the basis of reason and discernment, not on the basis of bias. Please don't just shoot my observations down just because you don't like them. I know your church may be very near and dear to your heart, but you can't award your church the medal of being immaculate. It is susceptible to error and sin. (To modify a quote, the church that believes it is perfect has already shown itself to be imperfect by claiming perfection. I think Spurgeon said it but I can't seem to find it.)

As you will later see in this post, I do not think Sovereign Grace is perfect by any means. If you attend a Sovereign Grace church, you probably don’t either. However, you may only assent to that general statement, but when the specifics are brought up about where it is imperfect, you may fall into denial. This can be proven further if I would ask you to provide me with three areas in which Sovereign Grace is imperfect. Taking it even further, I could ask you if you believed that Sovereign Grace is susceptible to falling into corrupted practices and doctrines. Lastly, I could ask you whether, if Sovereign Grace had fallen into corrupted practices and doctrines, the entire church body could be oblivious to it because they are so immersed in the Sovereign Grace culture. If you answered no even to that last question, then I think you have a very favorably biased opinion of SGM. You think SGM is perfect (practically, even if you wouldn’t deliberately vocalize it) and is not capable of sins on a broad scale, even though this is contrary to the heavy weight on indwelling sin that SGM stresses.

If there is one thing I have learned in the past year, it’s that anybody is susceptible to any sin. Look at the story of David and Bathsheba in 2 Samuel 11. David was a man after God’s own heart. Nobody in all the land of Israel could have conceived that he would have sinned so grievously by murdering Uriah and fornicating with Bathsheba. I am so glad this chapter is in the Bible. It is so easy to fall into thinking that once I become a Christian, I am not susceptible to committing such impending sins. I like to think that if I got married, I would be faithful to my wife. We would enjoy happy marriage all our days and I would never beat her. I would never leave her and my children. I would never, given a position of power, adjudicate the extermination of 6 million people. By God’s grace, I could keep myself from doing those things. But apart from Him, there is no guarantee. That’s a hard truth to accept. It may make some people frightened of me, that I have said I am susceptible to those sins. But I am admitting my susceptibility to those things not because I wish to do them, but because I wish very much not to do them. I myself am susceptible to murder, sexual immorality, rape, etc. It is at the very moment that I proclaim myself insusceptible to these sins that the devil has an entryway in to tempt me to commit those very sins, for sin is crouching at the door (Genesis 4:7). Sovereign Grace speaks more about self-righteousness than any other church I’ve been to. And yet, while at first glance it seems like this focused intensity should lend them greater victory over self-righteousness, it has actually (I believe) led to greater conquer by it.

One often meets his destiny on the road he takes to avoid it.
-Master Oogway, Kung Fu Panda

On January 24, 2010, one year ago today, I left Sovereign Grace for personal reasons, nothing to do with the church itself. However, being on the outside has given me a critical perspective of the ministry that I believe is impossible to attain from the inside. (Indeed, correct self assessment is nearly impossible to attain. It’s like how the way we hear our own voice is different than it actually sounds.)

Many people who attend a Sovereign Grace church have done so for many years and were saved since they had started attending. I myself attended the same Sovereign Grace church for 11 years (we attended 2 other Sovereign Grace churches in El Paso, Texas and Fairfax, Virginia before that) and was saved at the Celebration conference in 2001. It is often hard for these people to remember what churches “on the outside” are like. They often have a skewed opinion of non-SGM churches that is a direct result of what I believe to be the biggest wrongdoing of SGM.

1. Sovereign Grace Ministries is, intentionally or unintentionally, elitist in nature (or at least a breeding ground for elitism).

Ask anybody in Sovereign Grace how much they love their church and they will reply, “I couldn’t be happier.” Nothing wrong with that! Praise God that they have found a church family that they can call home and serve the Lord with. However, they may also add on some of the following statements. “I would never move to a city that did not have a Sovereign Grace church.” “I could never go back to attending any church that’s not Sovereign Grace.” Now, I don’t want to make light of the fact that it’s difficult to find a good church that is not theologically off the mark. (Some churches don’t even mention the word sin. My dad’s church in Albuquerque put on a worship session that was more like a concert, and the pastor “preached” jokes more like he was a comedian.) Many people may have had bad experiences in other churches where the theology was so messed up that they were hindered from ever having a true relationship with God. I don’t want to make light of that fact. It is so difficult to fight the battles of life when you’re not in a good church, because when your soul starts going hungry, everything else goes with it. However, notice how the statements above are begging, BEGGING for elitist attitudes. Sovereign Grace is the only church you would attend? So you mean Sovereign Grace is the only type of church that God is 100% working in? It’s His favorite? The door is swung wide open, and elitism is just a step away from entering it.

It’s subtle and it’s small, but this tiny seed of elitism, when watered, can grow into a giant, flourishing tree. Many people in Sovereign Grace will, unknowingly, begin to look down on every non-SGM church. I know I did, and I know my former former pastor’s family did too. My family used to live 5 minutes away from them, so we would see them pretty frequently. One time we were riding with them in their old purple van (may it rest in peace) past a church that had one of those lettered church signs in front. “Gee, I wonder what it’s going to say today” one of the pastor’s children said in contempt. We all chuckled in agreement. “Poor, lost, wandering souls! When will they see the light and come to Sovereign Grace?” Those are the kinds of thoughts that were going through our heads. And looking back, what did those signs say? I remember one said: “What will guide your life: TV guide or the Word?” I remember laughing about this!! No, it’s not speckled with SGMish words like “grace” and “justification” and “propitiation.” But how is the message in any way spiritually impotent? We live in a media-satiated culture, but the Bible should light your path, not the television, is all it’s saying. Is that really that bad? Is it really worth making fun of because it isn’t “Breathe grace” or “Keep the main thing the main thing?” The fact is, it’s not unBiblical. It’s unSGM. And it is a very common practice for SGMers to confuse the two.

For SGMers, if they don’t see anything right off the bat that is wrong with another church, they will search to find something. It has to be there. All other churches are inferior to Sovereign Grace. A common one is that “Their worship songs aren’t doctrinally sound.” What does that even mean? They’re singing about Allah, or they’re not heavily mentioning what vile sinners we all are in every single song like SGM does? I remember how much I used to shake my head at songs such as Friend Of God by Israel Houghton. “What a pathetic excuse for a worship song,” I used to think. “Where’s the gospel in it? Why aren’t they singing about the blood of Jesus?” I shiver inside knowing that I used to think like this. We recently sang this song at my current church, Denver United, and it was an amazing experience. Our worship leader, Austin Pyle, loves God with all of his heart. He radiates Jesus like a star. He led us in this song, and my heart burst for joy by the end, reminded how I used to be an enemy of God, but now I am His friend. It is more of a miracle than I often given it credit that I am a friend of God. How is this not glorifying to God, celebrating that we are His friends? Why is it inferior just because it does not follow the formula of Sovereign Grace worship music? Where in the Bible does it say that worship songs must use theological words and present the Fall and Redemption in every single song? Yes songs about the gospel are wonderful, but why is a simple love song to God not enough? Is not a relationship supposed to be personal, not ritualistic? (Muslims pray the same thing everyday to Allah, so it’s not surprising that Allah is not a personal god. There’s no room for pouring out your heart; you stick to the code.) If Israel Houghton wrote the song Friend Of God from his heart for his Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, how dare I look down on him because he doesn’t fit the SGM code.

You see, the problem with Sovereign Grace is not that they have convictions about how to do things. That’s part of being human. All churches have different convictions about how to do things. The pitfall of Sovereign Grace is that they believe that the way they do things is the only way to do them. That is the fruit of elitism. One of the biggest reasons I love Denver United is that they are so open (not unBiblically so) to many ways of doing things. We sing hymns, and we sing more upbeat, modern songs. Some people dance, while others were raised Baptist and just stand there during worship. Some songs are wordy, while others are very simple. The main point is that judgmental attitudes are cast out of the room. We are here to worship God. Let’s not judge what other people are doing, and say that only those raising their hands are really worshipping God. Let’s not condescendingly look down on the worship leader because he uses a song that does not mention the cross in it. Let’s not let our attention be so focused on how things are not going the way they would’ve in a Sovereign Grace church. Let’s worship God, as His people. We have come together to sing love songs to our Savior and let nothing else get in the way. That is the attitude of the church I attend, and that is why I love it so.

One thing that should be done in Sovereign Grace churches is that opinions put forth in the pulpit should be clearly, publicly designated as opinions, otherwise they become doctrines in the minds of the congregation. Several things that really achieved “doctrinal” status in Sovereign Grace over the years are homeschooling, girls going to college and courting. There was a point many years ago when you were expected to homeschool your children if you were a parent, not go to college if you were a girl and court if you were able to be in a relationship (which, according to Brent Detwiler and also taught as doctrine and not as opinion, is only if you’re in a position to have children). Those were givens. They were things you’d do if you were really a Christian. There is wisdom in each of those things, but they are not virtuous in themselves. It’s how and why they are practiced. Some people have come to their senses and relaxed up on these some over the years, but others still hold strong. I remember how lowly I used to think of people who dated, even if those people were sincere Christians. I used to think lowly of my cousins for dating, even though I had NO idea of what their relationships even looked like! How legalistic! The reason? I had been fed the idea that dating was inherently sinful and debasing to God. That thought had overtaken me, even though there’s no Biblical backing for it, and I had not even realized it. As I said before, many people have come to their senses about the whole courting obsession thing and actually allowed their kids to date. (I would have bet a million dollars five years ago that my former former pastor would never ever let any of his children date under any circumstances. His convictions have changed since, and thankfully I didn’t make that bet.) Nevertheless, there is a very important insight here into the functionality of Sovereign Grace: opinions become doctrines, and nobody realizes it. This is serious stuff. Look up Jesus' words in Mark 7:7 about those who "teach as doctrines the commandments of men." Since it is not kept in check, it happens all too easily, and suddenly you've come to believe that Peter was talking about Covenant Life Church in Matthew 16:18.

Of the five members of my former former pastor's family (who I love very much and now attend church with, save one), three of them have expressed to me at different times that they have been convicted so much about self-righteousness since leaving Sovereign Grace, and I'm sure the other two would offer similar sentiments. Even his wife expressed her sorrow that she had been so self-righteous in her thinking when it came to what were good churches. Yes, even the pastor's wife was not immune to getting her ankle entangled by the cords of Sovereign Grace elitism. Even the pastor's wife glided above the surface of prideful self-perception, never once having her spiritual conscience shake her awake to uncover what lied beneath. My point here is not to speak against her; she was only following the rites and rituals of Sovereign Grace as she was taught to do. She is a wonderful, sweet lady, and I love her so. My point here is to show how deeply the silent propaganda of Sovereign Grace elitism sinks down, even into those in positions of leadership and authority. Even they are numbed to the goodness of God outside Sovereign Grace and confined to everything that has CJ's stamp of approval on it. Therefore, this is a very dangerous problem. This is a problem that the leadership of Sovereign Grace do not and may never notice, because the problem is infused into their own thinking. (I have a hunch that if Tomczak were still around Sovereign Grace would be unrecognizable to what it is today. But then again, maybe that's why CJ pushed him out.) They are blind to it. Their minds operate on the idea that Sovereign Grace, while maybe not the perfect church, is the church that does things least imperfectly. Therefore, anyone who finds an error in Sovereign Grace is erring themselves. They are the ones who have yet to be enlightened to the powers of the Sovereign Grace way of life.

Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely.
-Lord Acton

It is sad, but many who were saved in a Sovereign Grace church believe (sometimes involuntarily) that God could’ve only saved them in a Sovereign Grace church. There is a sort of second conversion, as it were. First, you are dead in sin. Then, you give your life to Jesus at a non-SGM church. Finally, and most triumphantly, you give your life to Jesus (really this time) at a holy, sacrosanct SGM church. There are many individuals/couples/families who give testimonies like this to Sovereign Grace congregations. There is almost as much emphasis placed on their coming to Sovereign Grace as there is on their salvation. The idea begins to grow that churches "on the outside" are all corrupt, and Sovereign Grace churches are the only good churches. Again, I don’t want to discount the fact that it’s very hard to find a good church. But believing that God can only work in a SGM church, or that He works His will most in a SGM church, is straight up elitism, and is the greatest problem in SGM.

Just recently, my church, Denver United, merged with another Denver church, named just that, Denver Church. The pastor of Denver Church, Bryan Sederwall (quoted at the beginning of this post), gave a message on January 9, 2011. He spoke from Psalm 133, a psalm of just 3 verses but quite a lot to offer. In the first verse, the Psalmist talks of brothers dwelling in unity and how good of a thing it is. Now, what would most likely come to the minds of a Sovereign Grace congregation if Psalm 133:1 was read aloud on a Sunday morning? Most likely, Sovereign Grace brothers dwelling together in Sovereign Grace unity. Unity to them is uniformity and, since Sovereign Grace is in the right, conformity to the Sovereign Grace movement. This is what many of their minds and souls have come to believe: when the Bible talks about the people of God, they immediately picture Sovereign Grace churches, Sovereign Grace churchgoers and their children and Sovereign Grace pastors. They do not picture many churches of different sizes and shapes, they picture one type of church only: their own. To them, the people of God and the people of Sovereign Grace are one and the same. This is, tragically, NOT what the Psalmist (and therefore God) intended to say in Psalm 133. It is very far from it. Just the opposite, he was intending to boldly proclaim unity across diversity among the people of God. The people of God is not a clique. It is a nondiscriminatory melange of people of all different vocational, racial, ethnic and (yes, also on the list) church backgrounds united together by one thing: Jesus. Denver United warmly accepted Denver Church into their church family with open arms and truly lived out their name of being united. This is not how it would've gone down in a Sovereign Grace church, where the Sovereign Grace pastor would've stood there, arms crossed and tapping his foot until the pastor of the other church conceded to turn his church into a Sovereign Grace church.

This is very important: if something is not spelled out clearly in the Bible, such as what kind of music to sing during worship or whether you should preach from 2 verses during a message or a large chunk of text, you must remain humble about the fact that you could be wrong. You are a fallible person, not the infallible God. Yes, live by your convictions, but live in humility that your convictions could be wrong. There are other people just as sincere as you in the faith that have different convictions than you do. How dare you judge them to be in the wrong? You are not the Judge of all the earth. I am not saying Sovereign Grace should stop doing what they’re doing. Absolutely not. They have sought God and been convicted to do certain things in their services, and that’s absolutely fine. If we believe nothing, we cease to function. We must have convictions and follow them. What I am calling SGM out for is their elitist attitude, bred in nearly every churchgoer beneath the surface. Sovereign Grace, you are not the only church God is working in and through. You are not the only church that does it right. And you are not as humble as you profess to be. Until you realize that and seek God’s help to change, you will remain elitist in nature.

Onto the second greatest problem I see in Sovereign Grace.

2. Sovereign Grace is un-evangelical, in nearly every regard.

Evangelism is not something Sovereign Grace does (at least on a church scale). Indeed, it is something they push aside outside of their spiritual conscience. Jesus’ last words before He left earth were His commission to us to make disciples of all nations. And yet, Sovereign Grace is a group of churches that never performs any outreach and never teaches their members to do so, either. What you get is a group of people who are too timid to preach the gospel even to their next door neighbor. They may do this by simply ignoring the verses about evangelizing. They may do this by twisting doctrines and saying “God will use someone else. He will accomplish His will and my not choosing to evangelize won’t stop Him.” Or they may do this by telling themselves “Not everyone is called to evangelize. I’m just not brave enough. Sorry, God.” To put it succinctly, and probably get a bunch of SGMers mad at me, the bottom line is this: You’ve been saved by God, you’re incredibly grateful to Him and indebted to Him in a way you cannot repay and you love Him with all of your heart, but it’s just too far of a stretch to evangelize for Him.

My pastor, Rob Brendle, has an incredible heart for the lost. “This church is not mainly for us,” he reminds us Sunday after Sunday. “It is for the lost.” Rob has a huge heart for the lost, and when I hear him speak, I hear Jesus in his words. He is not just concerned about polishing his congregation. Yes, he is concerned about spiritual growth; we went through a series called Grow from Colossians last year. But he has an incredible heart for the lost. And while there are many things I respect about Sovereign Grace leaders, you will not find this passion in them. They are very spiritual without being evangelical. It is all about what God can do in the saved, not how God can save the unsaved. If someone walks into a Sovereign Grace church’s doors, then the church will minister to that person and share the gospel with him/her. But there is no going out into the world to preach to the lost. There is no “getting your feet wet” to get to the spiritually dying, even though that is what Jesus did. Sovereign Grace is all about the saved, not the sinners, even though Jesus said He left heaven not for the saved, but sinners (Mark 2:17).

“Now wait a minute! My Sovereign Grace church prays for the lost!” That’s good. Prayer is indispensable. We should never do anything in our lives without prayer to God for help. But is prayer to replace other actions? Think about it. If you’re looking for a job (as I am), do you pray for a job, but then sit at home and do nothing? No! You pray and then look for a job. The prayer is what makes your searching fruitful (in whatever God’s will is), but it doesn’t replace it. This is quite a sad excuse. Imagine the person you love the most is dying in a hospital bed. There is medicine to cure him/her located in a city 400 miles away, but there is a shipment of medicine that has a 50% chance of being shipped in tomorrow. He/she will be dead by tomorrow night, just enough time for you to go to the city and get the medicine and return. Do you take your chances and wait for the shipment? No! You ensure your loved one’s well being and drive through the night to get the medicine. You realize that while God could use the shipment, He may not and you don’t know His mind. He could also use your driving to the city to get the medicine. You don’t get so caught up in fatalistic thinking that you become immobile. You realize that because God is sovereign, you can be mobile and He will bless it, however He chooses. Prayer should not produce inactivity. On the contrary, prayer should spur us onto activity. It is what enables us: God, in His power, aiding us. To say you pray for the lost and that’s enough is just a diversion from your true heart. There may be several roots of this thinking, one which I will mention later in point 3.

I’ve read that Christianity spread so well in the early centuries because the earliest Christians were so loving and embracing. People were touched by them, and God used that to open them up to accept the gospel. Contrast that to a SGM church, where the church is loving inside the church walls, but right outside there are people dying, both physically and spiritually. There is no direct, intentional outreach in SGM to the spiritually dead. To put it as a metaphor, the gospel is a vaccine, and we are the syringes. Syringes were made to transfer vaccines to dying people (I do not mean to say that God must use us to save people, but that is the main way He does so). SGM instead is concerned with endlessly polishing the syringes, while the vaccine tubes lie in their cases unused. It is all about making the syringes sparkle and shine, while the dead are dying on the doorstep just outside. Sovereign Grace churches are for Sovereign Grace churchgoers, not the lost.

Whoever brings blessing will be enriched, and one who waters will himself be watered.
Proverbs 11:25

Open the Psalms. Read about how God can help you in trials. Open the Synoptic Gospels. Read about Jesus’ teachings and what we can learn from Him. Open Paul’s writings. Read about justification by faith alone and gradual sanctification. But make sure you stay away from passages about sharing to the lost. Quickly assent to the truth in Matthew 5:15 about hiding your light under a basket, then move on to something about how God can care for YOU. Again, there’s nothing wrong with reading about your relationship with God. We should always be growing in God and learning more about Him, seeking Him when we are depressed or stricken with trials, calling out to Him for more grace! But if this is all we do, then we are missing out on a huge part of why we were saved. We were not saved to just sit comfortably in our chairs on Sunday mornings sipping our Starbucks while people are going to hell all across the world. Really, if you’re not broken for the lost going to hell, how truly grateful are you that you yourself were saved?

This is the Sovereign Grace culture: you go to church and sing songs mostly by Bob Kauflin, Mark Altrogge, Steve & Vikki Cook, Pat Sczebel, and others, being constantly grateful that you sing songs that are actually pleasing to God (compared to all the blind wanderers in the world, stumbling in the dark in their folly). You hear a message by your pastor, being constantly grateful that you are hearing a message that is actually pleasing to God. You attend various Sovereign Grace meetings, being constantly grateful that you are spending time with people who actually know what’s pleasing to God. You buy the latest book by a Sovereign Grace author, being constantly grateful that you are reading a book that is actually pleasing to God. You attend the next big Sovereign Grace conference, and get so refreshed and filled up with God and encouraged and stirred up and provoked by everything that happens there, all actually pleasing to God. You do all this, while never casting the slightest thought or glance to those in the darkness, who desperately need a Savior. You are as shiny and gleaming as can be, like a trophy, and you must not be defiled. Therefore, you do not attend to the spiritually sick and dying, lest you become infected (even though, as my pastor wonderfully says, we are supposed to infect them, because God is greater than the one in the world!).

We are, by nature, receivers. Even if we have a desire to learn God’s Word, we still listen from a default, self-centered mindset that is always asking, “What can I get out of this?” But as we have seen, this is unBiblical Christianity. What if we changed the question whenever we gathered to learn God’s Word? What if we began to think, “What if I listen to His Word, so that I am equipped to teach this Word to others?” This changes everything. . . . God’s Word is no longer just being heard in a building. It is being multiplied through a community. It is multiplying because the people of God are no longer listening as if His Word is intended to stop with them. They are now living as if God’s Word is intended to spread through them. . . . Exciting things happen when the people of God believe the Word of God is worth spending their life to teach to others. . . . Whereas disinfecting Christians involves isolating them and teaching them to be good, discipling Christians involves propelling Christians into the world to risk their lives for the sake of others. . . . A community of Christians, each multiplying the gospel by going, baptizing and teaching in the context where they live everyday: is anything else, according to the Bible, even considered a church?
-David Platt

Onto problem number 3, which is a root of the first two.

3. Sovereign Grace is hyper-Calvinistic in their doctrines, meaning that they take Calvin’s teachings far beyond what they originally meant.

Calvin once said that half of all funds in a church should be given to minister to the poor. I don’t need to explain how SGM digresses from that one. Yes, SGM plants churches in other countries. That’s good. But what about other outreaches? What about reaching out to people on the streets of Gaithersburg, San Diego, Denver, wherever? What about reaching out to people who would otherwise never come to church? What about meeting their physical needs with love to open up their hearts to spiritual needs? What about feeding the poor, like Jesus mentions so often in the New Testament? This is not the teaching of Calvin’s that SGM takes to the extreme, however.

When God displays His power through mean and secondary causes, that power of His is never to be separated from those means or inferior causes. It is the excess of a drunkard to say, “God has decreed all that is to come to pass, and that must come to pass; therefore, to interpose any care or study, or endeavour of ours, is superfluous and vain”. But since God prescribes to us what we ought to do, and wills that we should be the instruments of the operation of His power, let us ever deem it unlawful in us to sunder those things which He hath joined together.
-John Calvin

Need I say more? If Calvin were alive today he would not be a Calvinist by SGM standards! He is not so incredibly fatalistic that he lets the providence of God overtake Him in a disastrous way and kill his passion for the lost. “God’s will will not be moved, so it doesn’t change anything if I do nothing” was not a thought that went through Calvin’s mind. He said that it is because God is in control that we can have success in anything. Our passion for God should spur us onto action! Because even though God’s will will not be thwarted, our love for Him causes us to want to be a part of it! We don’t want to sit around lazily and let others do His work. We want to be a part of it! We want to share the good news so that some will hear and be saved!

I am a Calvinist, but not overly so. God is responsible for my salvation. I could not have been saved without Him. It is His opening my eyes that made it possible for me to be saved. I am not good apart from Him. He loved me first and drew me first. Then I chose Him. We are jointly responsible, but my role is minute both in significance and impact compared to His. Sovereign Grace will disagree even on the last sentence. I couldn’t have chosen Him, because that means there’s good in me, more good than in those who didn’t choose Him! But what are the implications of such a doctrine? If we don’t choose Him, then He makes us choose Him apart from our will. It is a kneejerk reaction. He reaches inside us and causes us to choose Him. That doesn’t paint a good picture of God. That means that we are robots, swaying whichever way in the wind that God blows it, with no free will. I am only a Christian because God overrode my free will and programmed me to choose Him. Those who are not saved did not have their free will overridden by Him. Therefore, God plays favorites. (or He chooses randomly, not much better)

You see, I am not trying to claim any righteousness in my action of choosing God. Look at all the disclaimers I said above! God is the first cause of my salvation. He choose to keep me alive instead of cast me into hell. Then He drew me by His Spirit. Then He opened my eyes. After all this, enabled by His Spirit’s grace, I chose Him. That was the secondary cause, enabled only by the first cause. God is the empowerment of my choice; without His grace I cannot make the choice. Say I am a man drowning, and a lifesaver is thrown to me (the gospel). I can choose to grab ahold of it, but that still doesn’t save me. I still have to be pulled in. The power of someone pulling me in saves me. My grabbing is only a necessary condition, but it is not sufficient to save me. It does not become focused on what I did (grabbing the lifesaver) unless we choose to focus our attention there. I did one little thing, but God made it all happen. He deserves the glory. I only did what I did because He changed me. But denying what I did leads to fatalism, making us all automatons.

This doctrine, I believe, is one thing that leads to the elitism of SGM. “God chose to work in us, but not others.” “God chose to reveal the truth to us, but not others.” “God led me to a Sovereign Grace church, therefore it must be the best (nevermind that He led other people elsewhere).” How can you believe all those statements without believing that there must be something special in you that made God choose you? Even if you profess that you are not worthy, the logical conclusion that may undetectably operate is that you were worthy (or very lucky). Under this guise, you don’t need to do anything. Doing anything might even interfere with God’s work! Leave the lost alone. If God wants to save them, He will strike them with a lightning bolt and suddenly they will know the gospel. No use sacrificing your comfort to talk to one of them, it could be awkward!

I am very aware that this all applies to myself, as well. I could fall into elitism against Sovereign Grace. I don’t want to do that. Woe to the hypocrites, as Jesus declared! (Matthew 23) I must proceed forward, learning from the past, so that I do not come to see Denver United as the perfect church. It is not. I love it to death. But God works in a variety of ways. He works in different kinds of churches and different kinds of people in different ways. Rob is one of them, and I love him so. He has become one of my heroes in the past year, and is one of the most respectable men of God I can name in the Denver area. But He is still fallen. He is fallible. What he or his church does is not the only way to do things. He is one of many, and I open my arms wide to the others that God uses.

Sovereign Grace let their guard down against elitism (self-righteousness), and it crept in, surreptitiously. Sin has blinded them to its presence, and it would take a great work of God in order for the blinders to be removed. Nothing is impossible with God, though do not be deceived: it all starts with humility.